Chéri and The End of Chéri

by Colette

They had known each other for twenty-five years. The hostile intimacy of loose-moraled women whom a man enriches and then deserts, whom another man ruins, the fractious friendship of rivals lying in wait for the first wrinkle or white hair. The companionship of pragmatic women, skilled at financial games, but the one a miser and the other a sybarite . . . Such bonds matter. Another, stronger connection came to unite them later in life: Chéri.

She was waiting in vain, for the first time in her life, for what she had never before lacked: trust, calm, confessions, sincerity, the indiscreet effusiveness of a young lover—those hours of blackest night when the almost filial gratitude of an adolescent unrestrainedly pours forth tears, confidences, resentments, on the warm breast of a mature and dependable friend.